Tag Archives: elitism

Ontario’s universities are all publicly funded, which means that in theory they receive the same amount of money per student, plus tuition from that student. So why are only some crying poor? Laurier has announced that it is eliminating faculty and staff due to budgetary constraints. Similar reasons have been given by administrators at York and U of T to explain their ongoing labor problems.

Unfortunately for him, “academic culture” is a proxy for social class. (And isn’t this especially apparent when, in addition to teaching dead white men like Shakespeare, you are also the golf coach? Is there any waspier sport than golf? Racquetball? POLO???)

I am, however, concerned about the general culture at public schools—at least at the ones I’ve seen—of disengagement and compulsory learning. So when it comes to my daughter, I opt to invest a little more—to ensure she’s immersed in a community where it’s acceptable, and even admirable, to show natural enthusiasm for knowledge…

Well, we all remember how nerds were treated in public school, right?

(if you’re a guy)

(if you’re a girl)

Yet somehow, in some way, they did manage to survive, make it through, prosper, and even go to graduate school (I won’t say that they became part of the 1%, because we all know that smart 1%ers went to private school — and isn’t that part of the problem???).

By limiting his daughter’s education to her socioeconomic peers, Godsey is trapping her in a circle of her own class. That insularity blocks her from the recognition that there are actually people out there who don’t think it’s cool to read Kant or Dostoyevsky, who like sports like wrestling, and who watch NASCAR — and that those people are still good people. Thanks to educational gerrymandering, not all public schools will teach you that, either — but it is the ideal, as he might have learned from a classic high school movie:

We all have things we can learn from each other.

The article ends up with a plea that one person doesn’t matter in the face of chronic underfunding (or maybe misdirection of funding) and a “lifetime” of support.

Public schools have my tax money, my lifelong employment, and almost anything else they need of me; pulling my daughter—one student—out of the system is probably the least of its worries. And on a more abstract level, the above criticisms fail to acknowledge the cumbersome, almost fixed nature of the dominant culture I’ve seen at public schools—one that occasionally isolates students who love learning, are teased by the “cool” kids and even bullied into joining the masses. No matter how much she voluntarily recites Shakespeare, the student I envision my daughter becoming would never be able to single-handedly transform a public school into an environment that is cool to learning.

But what if everyone thought this way? Doesn’t everyone think this way — especially those who have a choice?

Hyprocrite auteur, public schools have your white guilt. If they had your belief, commitment, or good faith, they would also have your daughter.

Talking about the “new economy” of not stuff, not ideas, but exchange, she states:

Which underscores a disturbing truth about the new economy: it’s all on you. People who are smart, well educated and entrepreneurial may well do better in this paradigm.

Except, of course, for the poor sods who had the misfortune to be born in the 80s — the crash wiped them out. Faroohar blithely ignores generational inequity to focus on socioeconomic status:

But what about those who aren’t as well positioned or at least need help in tooling up?

The obvious answer is for government to provide more help through a reformed educational system, workforce training and a social safety net to pick up slack. That’s what I consistently hear tech titans and other CEOs calling for. The hitch is that they are calling for it even as they pay a smaller share of the tax pie to fund it all.

I’ve gotta say, “rich or welfare” doesn’t that sound like that great a deal to me.

If the “new economy” is based on, essentially, barter — Faroohar’s example is Airbnb, a “lifestyle” alternative to the hotel — there isn’t going to be a way to scale up your skills. Last time I checked, a college diploma can’t buy you a house. If you’re of a certain age, it can’t even get you a job. So what are you going to do for those workers?

In news that might surprise people not in academia, a new study has shown that students from top departments get the most jobs. In other words, in the ivory tower (as everywhere else), it really matters where you went to college. And grad school. And possible post-doctoral studies.

This puts another nail in the coffin of the idea that there is a meritocracy somewhere in education; as the study’s authors note, there is no indication that the “brand-name” scholars are any better at their jobs than anyone else. They’re being picked just for that name (*coughcough* Harvardyaleprinceton).

Because the study primarily focused on research, it’s not clear how or if that translates into classroom instruction. But parents, in case you weren’t worried yet, you should start — other data has suggested that teaching is not a concern for the administrators who ensure faculty jobs.